“Dan Garrison, Beau Lavenstein, Hal Pressbury.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Good. Keep writing, RG, this’ll take a minute.”
Stevenson kept writing, though his shoulders hunched again. Parker touched Keegan’s elbow, and Keegan nodded and went down on one knee beside the toolkit. Putting his automatic on the floor, he opened the toolkit and took out an automobile rear-view mirror; just the rectangular piece of silvered glass, without the metal housing or the mounting arm. Carrying the mirror, he traveled on all fours diagonally past Parker to the glass wall, staying under the bottom edge of the glass. When he got to the wall he switched to a sitting position, legs crossed tailor-fashion and head stooped somewhat, and slowly raised the mirror up in front of him. He was sitting sideways to the wall, and had the mirror turned at an angle; when it was a little above his head, he said, “Got’em.”
“What’s it look like?”
“Double room. Double length, I mean.” The mirror moved slightly. “Two doors the hall, one near, one far. Sofa in between, one guard sitting at it. Table against the wall beyond the far door, one guard sitting in a chair at the table, facing the wall, playing solitaire.” The mirror moved. “Four desks down the middle of the room, with adding machines. Three men, one woman. Cash on all four desks. They’re counting it, banding it, dropping the stacks into metal trays on the floor. Back wall all filing cabinets, no door.” The mirror moved. “Right wall, four windows. Table between windows two and three, with canvas sacks on it, most of them empty. Here comes the woman.” Silence for ten seconds; the mirror moved. “The dough must have come upstairs in the sacks. She just took one of the full ones, carried it to the desk, emptied the bills out, put the empty sack back on the table. Now she’s gone back to work.”
“Where’s the third guard?”
“On the right.” The mirror moved. “Leaning against the wall beside the money table. Kind of looking around at everything.”
“That’ll be Garrison. RG, don’t look up. Keep writing. Is Garrison the one beside the money?”
“He was, yes, the last I looked.”
“The young one, Beau Lavenstein, is he the one playing solitaire?”
“Yes, he was.”
Parker nodded. That made Hal Pressbury the one on the sofa. Parker said to Keegan, “How many phones?”
The mirror moved. “One, on the first desk.”
“RG, if you were going to call that number, what would you dial?”
“That’s extension twenty-three.”
“Is that all you dial? Two three?”
“No. For an inside call, you dial nine first.” 33 “Nine two three, and that phone will ring?”
“That’s right, yes.”
“Good. Now, RG, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to get up and go to the filing cabinet behind you. Open the top drawer and act as though you’re looking for something. Good. Just like that. Stay there.”
Parker got down on hands and knees and crawled across the carpet and around behind the desk. Keegan kept watching the other room in the mirror, and Stevenson stood at the filing cabinet, his back to everything that was happening.
Parker raised himself cautiously behind the desk till he could look over the top. His first sight of the room beyond showed him everything as Keegan had described it. No one was looking in this direction. The four clerks were working, Dan Garrison was looking at the money, Beau Lavenstein was looking at his card game, and Hal Pressbury was looking off into space and seemed to be mostly asleep.
Parker lifted his right arm and slid it across the desk top to the phone, then pulled the phone toward him. The cord ran off and down the side of the desk, so there was no problem about length. Parker took the phone off the desk top, put it on the floor, sat in front of it, and dialed 923. Faintly, through the glass and the distant sound of crowd-and-music in the auditorium, he heard the phone ring in the next room.
“It’s a clerk,” Keegan said, and the receiver in Parker’s hand clicked. A voice said, “Hello?”
“A message for Edward Lavenstein,” Parker said.
“One moment, please.”
Parker waited. Keegan said, “Here he comes. Garrison’s watching, but he isn’t moving.”
“Hello?”
“Beau?”
“Who’s this?”
“Hold on a second, will you? There’s a message.”
Parker lowered the phone and put his hand over the mouthpiece. Now, if there was trouble, no one from the next room would be using the phone; the line was tied up till Parker broke the connection at this end.
He said, “RG, don’t turn around. I’ve got more instructions for you. When I say to, you go over to the door, open it, and tell Garrison you want to see him. Get him to come in here. Stand to the left of the doorway when he comes in, so he doesn’t see my partner. Talk to him as he’s coming in, keep him distracted, say anything you want. When he’s in, shut the door and say, ‘There are men pointing guns at you. I don’t want anybody killed. I assured them we’d cooperate.’ You got that?”
“I think so.” Nervousness trembled in Stevenson’s voice like a wind riffling curtains.
“Tell me what you’re going to say after you shut the door.”
“There are men here with guns. I don’t want anybody killed. I said we’d cooperate.”
“Fine. Go ahead how.”
Stevenson turned and walked toward the door. He moved unsteadily, as though he were very tired or a little drunk. Parker, keeping one hand folded over the mouthpiece of the phone, stretched out on his stomach behind the desk, so that his head and shoulders emerged past the desk’s right side and he could see the door Stevenson was walking toward. His left hand, holding the phone receiver, was down at his side. His right hand was out in front of his face, resting the butt of the automatic on the carpet.
Stevenson reached the door, and grabbed for the knob as though he needed it to go on standing. He rested his other palm, shoulder-height, against the door frame, then opened the door and called, “Lieutenant Garrison? Could you come here for a moment?”
Down by Parker’s left hand, a tinny voice said, “Hello? Hello?” A deeper echo sounded through the open door.
Keegan, his voice low, said, “Here he comes. Easy as pie.”
Parker saw the feet first, saw Stevenson moving awkwardly to his left—the door opened to the right, making the move slightly cumbersome—heard Stevenson say, “Well, there certainly is a lot of money tonight. A full house, eh? A fitting close for the old building. The new one just won’t seem like home, will it? Here, let me—”
Garrison had seen neither Keegan nor Parker yet, and was standing in the doorway, waiting for Stevenson to tell him what he wanted. He was about Stevenson’s age, forty-something, but was leaner and harder, with a deeply lined face. Stevenson was trying to reach behind him to shut the door.
Garrison moved reluctantly, saying, “What is it, Mr. Stevenson?” The voice was carefully neutral, but in its very neutrality, betrayed the contempt Garrison felt. So he was going to be another Dockery, and potentially more trouble.
Stevenson, in shutting the door, started to lose his balance because of his nervousness, and had to cling to Garrison’s right arm; that was perfect, and an unexpected bonus. Stevenson said, gasping suddenly, “There are men with guns— Don’t do anything, for the love of God!”
“What?” Garrison backed into the closed door, trying to push Stevenson away.
“Lieutenant Garrison, don’t!”
Parker called, “It’s okay, Dan!”
Garrison, confused for a second by the sound of his own first name, stopped struggling with Stevenson and looked around, still seeing no one. “What the hell is this?”
Parker had the automatic pointed at Garrison’s chest. He called, “RG, back up! Back up to your left.”